CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - As protests continue over police violence toward minorities, a new lawsuit accuses a North Carolina police officer of needlessly escalating a 2019 standoff before fatally shooting a black man.
The Charlotte Observer reports that the federal lawsuit was filed Thursday by Deborah Franklin, the mother of Danquirs Franklin. It alleges that Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Wende Kerl panicked, violated her training and “shocked” the other officer on the scene when she opened fire on Franklin outside a Burger King on March 25, 2019.
The lawsuit was brought after two weeks of protests in Charlotte and around the world over the police killing of George Floyd. The North Carolina native died May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Floyd was black. The police officer is white.
Charlotte attorney Luke Largess, who is representing Franklin’s estate, said he filed the complaint after Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones rejected the Citizen Review Board’s unanimous recommendation that the Franklin shooting was unjustified, a decision that preceded Floyd’s death.
But he acknowledged that the timing, while coincidental, is “powerful, too.”
“I think the public understanding of these cases is different now than it has been in a long time,” he said.
Franklin, according to video and a report by District Attorney Spencer Merriwether, appeared to be complying with police orders to lay down his weapon when Kerl shot him.
Merriweather ruled the Franklin shooting as legally justified. In announcing his decision not to charge Kerl, Merriweather said his office could not prove that she and Burger King manager Terry Grier did not have a reasonable fear for their safety, given Franklin’s erratic behavior and the fact that he was armed.
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